Question

The following sentence has not been edited. There is one error in the line. Pick the incorrect word and the correction from the given options that completes the sentence correctly.
We are in dangerous times because they have too much freedom.
a) Incorrect = we, Correct = I
b) Incorrect = are, Correct = is
c) Incorrect = they, Correct = we
d) Incorrect = we, Correct = them

Answer 1

Hint: The correction should be grammatically correct and should make some sense, i.e. bring out some meaning in the sentence.

Complete answer:
Before solving the question let us look into the information that the sentence provides us (even if there are some incorrect words within it) –
As you can see the words – ‘we’ and ‘are’ in the above sentence indicate that the sentence is talking about a group of people and not a single person.
So, by this explanation, we can eliminate options – ‘a’ and ‘b’ because of the correction that they provide changes with the sentence into a singular (one) person form rather than plural (more than one) form.
This leaves us with options – ‘c’ and ‘d’, if you look at option – ‘d’ it says to change ‘we’ in the sentence into ‘them’, this would be grammatically wrong as it would give us the sentence – ‘them are in dangerous times, because they have too much freedom’. This makes no sense hence this is also incorrect.
Now, this leaves us the option – ‘c’, i.e. change them into we, which gives us the sentence – “we are in dangerous times, because we have too much freedom”, this sentence is grammatically correct and makes sense. Hence, this is the correct solution.

Note: Do not change the meaning of the sentence or the form of the sentence, i.e. it is in plural form do not change it into a singular form. That will help you eliminate some of your options that are incorrect.